Get Your Pitchforks Ready. Jim Delany Is Coming To Penn State
If long-time Big Ten commissioner Jim Delany thought Penn State fans were going to let up on booing him during his last year, he should think again.
Delany is scheduled to come to campus to speak at the Center for the Study of Sports in Society’s Intercollegiate Athletics Conference this fall.
Delany headlines a loaded slate of speakers for the conference. Also featured will be ESPN analyst and outspoken student athlete advocate Jay Bilas, Penn State athletic director Sandy Barbour, and Jeffrey Kessler, a prominent sports antitrust lawyer at the heart of the current legal debate regarding college athletes’ amateurism. Unnamed concussion research experts are also expected to appear.
The conference, which will take place on October 17 and 18, intends to facilitate a “cutting-edge exchange between academics and industry professionals on issues confronting big time college sports” (read: big business conferences exploiting its athletes for lucrative TV deals). Who better to speak on this topic than Delany, whose conference distributed more than $50 million revenue shares to its member schools in 2018?
Registration is not yet open, but you can request more information to stay up to date.
For the last decade, sports-interested faculty and administrators at Penn State have attempted to study relevant issues through the Center for the Study of Sports in Society by hosting events and offering contests. In years past, the Center has hosted conferences on sports analytics and sports labor.
Delany is most notorious among Penn State fans for supporting the sanctions imposed on the football program following the Sandusky scandal and considering tacking on additional punishments if the NCAA did “not enact unprecedented penalties.”
To make matters worse for Delany, when Penn State was once again postseason eligible, he famously endorsed Ohio State for the College Football Playoff…despite previously saying only conference champions should qualify.
Anyway, here’s a sneak peek of what Delany has to look forward to as he gets ready for retirement:
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